Monday, November 4, 2013

Studying Maths is no key to career success

The conclusions drawn from a study done
by by a researcher with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland in USA, appear to be a case of gross generalization based on a very limited data set.
He says that a student’s income later in life is tied to the level
of mathematics taken in high school. Mr. Jonathan James, who did this
research says: “The more math one takes, the more one earns on
average, and the more likely one is to have a job.” His research
may say anything, but I can vouch from my experience that this is not
true at all.

About
three years ago, we had a get together of my schoolmates, who had
passed out of the high school in 1959. During this meet, we had
organized a little programme, where each and everyone of us, narrated
what he has been doing after he left school. The programme turned out
to be highly engrossing. But, as I recollect the life stories of my
classmates, one thing becomes very clear today. Those of us, who did
exceptionally well in their studies in school, have led later quite
an ordinary life. Let me give you two concrete examples. One of us,
who was listed in top 30 students at the final examinations, actually
took longer time even to complete his degree in Engineering, and has
had a lusterless ordinary career in one of the electrical supply
companies, where he showed no extra ordinary progress. Another of our
classmates, who had won a prestigious scholarship at the school
leaving examination, was even denied a promotion, which he was
entitled to, till his day of retirement.

Actually,
those, who did well in life, in fact were ordinary average students,
not particularly excelling in their studies. One of my classmates had
barely passing marks, is now running a flourishing manufacturing
business. Another one had become an admiral of the navy. My general
observation was that almost everyone who had succeeded in life, had
slogged for years and years before they had some suceess that could
be called noteworthy.

Coming
back to the study done by Mr. James, his observations are
interesting, even though I do not tend to agree with them. He
differentiates high school maths between number of levels in order of
difficulty as pre-Algebra to Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and more
advanced classes. I do not think that in India these kind of options
are available to students in India. They would have to either take
maths as a subject for their exams with a standard curriculum or opt
out of it. However, let's see what Mr. James' findings are. He finds
that the higher level of math taken, the more likely a student would
graduate and the more likely he would go to college. According to him
half of low-math students attend college versus 68% of high-math
high-school grads. But importantly, Mr. James found the students who
took higher level math classes were three times as likely to earn a
four-year college degree than students who took only Algebra I.

I do
not think that in India at least, opting for college is linked to
academic performance only. The decision about college education is
principally based on economic factors, If the parents can afford it,
their children can get admissions to colleges. What course a student
chooses in college, also depends upon his liking along with his
academic performance in school. A student who has no aptitude for
maths, can choose an arts and humanities course and can do extremely
well their. Many of India's top bureaucrats are known to have taken
this route. They need not be good in maths at all. There are number
of courses like humanities, fine arts and law where study of maths is
not mandatory at all. I can see many eminent people in society
around me, who had opted for these courses and are highly successful
people today.

Perhaps
Mr. James may be right, when he is talking about school dropouts. His
study shows that school dropouts earn higher wages if they have
studied higher maths before leaving school. This is logical because
an employer is bound to pay higher if he finds that his new recruit
is proficient in basic maths and would help him in better training
for the job. The same logic however may not be true fro higher rung
jobs that require graduation as basic minimum qualification.

Essentially,
what I have seen is that a good education is important because it
offers a good basic platform for a person wishing to enter profession
or business. Further success now depends upon opportunities that come
his way and how well he jumps at them. Luck also forms a very
important factor and finally there is no substitute for hard work.
Whether one has learned higher maths or not would hardly make any
difference over all to his career.